Alexei Chernyshev, Yury Belov, Mikhail Yanchevsky
Government decisions trigger protest actions.
Motorists in Russian cities staged mass actions yesterday to protest the rise of customs duties on imported used cars yesterday. In Novosibirsk protesters challenged Vladimir Putin, who raised the duties, to change from his government Mercedes to a Russian-made Volga. In Krasnoyarsk protesters advised him to "help the oligarchs out of his own pocket", while in Vladivostok several thousand demonstrators paralyzed traffic in the city for five hours demanding the resignation of Mr Putin's Government.
Yesterday's protest actions in the capital of the Primorye area were the largest in several years. Dmitry Penyaz, leader of the Society for the Protection of Motorists in the Primorye Territory, explained that the rise of import duties and, as a consequence, the price of foreign-made cars, would leave 80,000 people engaged in the automobile business in Vladivostok jobless as early as February. On December 5, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a decree (effective January 11) significantly raising the customs duties on foreign cars imported into Russia. It also changes the age from seven to five years when a car is defined as a "used car".
Yesterday's protest picket was sanctioned by the Vladivostok authorities. About 3,000 people gathered on Korabelnaya Embankment. The protestors decided to split, with one part driving to the airport in their cars and the other staging a demonstration in the city's main streets. The picketers carried banners that read: "Arbitrary administrative acts are a noose on the people's neck", "The rise of car import duties spells death for the Far East", "Putin, where are your promised preferences for the Far East?". The police were unprepared for such a development. While the OMON special police unit at the airport entrance managed to prevent the protestors from breaking onto the runway, the main city streets were quickly blocked by demonstrators.
About 1,500 people reached the City Hall. The Mayor, Igor Pushkarev, and First Vice Governor of the territory, Alexander Kostenko, came out to talk to the demonstrators. "You have achieved your goal: you got your demands across to the authorities," Mr Pushkarev said, urging the demonstrators to disperse. "We need to go live on Channel 1 so that the whole country know our demands: No raise of customs duties and affordable petrol prices," the protestors responded.
As one of the organizers of the action, Anastasia Zagoruyko, told Kommersant, the situation quickly got out of control: "Nobody listened to us, people were in an ugly mood." Chanting "Putin should resign", the protestors reached the city's main thoroughfare, the Nekrasovsky Flyover, and blocked traffic, allowing only ambulance and fire-fighting vehicles through. The demonstrators blocked traffic for five hours, paralysing the whole city. It was only when darkness fell that OMON managed to push the protestors back, detaining some of them.
During the protest action several hundred signatures were collected under calls for the Government to resign and urging all the Russian officials to use only domestically produced cars.
In Novosibirsk an officially allowed picket took place in the city's central square. It began with 100 protestors holding posters "The wheel on the right is our right" against a possible ban on right-hand drive cars, "Raise living standards, not customs duties", and "Mr. Putin, trade your Mercedes for a Volga". Shortly after the action started the square began to be filled with cars converging from various parts of the city, about 200 in all. The car owners engaged in squabbles with the police and tried to block traffic. The traffic police brought evacuators and tried to remove a Toyota Land Cruiser belonging to one of the picketers but were prevented from doing so by the protestors. At one o'clock, when the time allotted for the picket ran out, the official picketers began to disperse while spontaneous protestors spent another hour bickering with the police and only dispersed when police threatened to "detain everyone indiscriminately".
In Krasnoyarsk a "funeral car procession" was staged by the regional Motorists Movement. A column of 300 cars decked out with black ribbons with emergency lights flashing drove through the city streets at slow speed. Many cars carried stickers on the rear windows which read: "Mr. Putin, help the oligarchs out of your own pocket", "Raise duties on Russian Government's actions". Special OMON police units were not sent against the motorists, but traffic police pulled over and thoroughly inspected the cars with ribbons and fined 50 of them.
In the end most protestors parked their cars in front of the regional government's building and tooted their horns for five minutes. The passing cars honked in solidarity. "The citizens could see that a lot of people and not just a dozen crackpots were worried about the problem of import duties," the organiser of the actions, Ivan Smolin, said in summarising its results.
